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Examples of pubes in a Sentence
Word History
borrowed from Latin pūbēs (genitive pūbis) "adult population, group of able-bodied men, age of puberty, pubic region, pubic hair," of uncertain origin
Note: Allied with pūbēs is the presumed s-stem adjective pūbēs, stem pūber- "physically mature, adult"—see puberty. The interrelation of these words and their further etymology are problematic. An s-stem adjective with nominative singular *-ēs, genitive singular *-esos in Indo-European was regularly a compound, which would imply that the original form was impūbēs "not yet having reached puberty, beardless," from which pūbēs would have been back-derived. Chronology of attestation, however, does not support this hypothesis: the derivatives pūbēscere (see pubescent) and pūblicus (see public entry 1) are known from Old Latin, whereas impūbēs is no earlier than Lucretius (1st centuryb.c.). A root *pūb- has no obvious source; *peu̯dh- or *peu̯bh- are improbable and give rise to no points of comparison. Douglas Adams ("Sanskrit púmān, Latin pūbēs and related words," Die Sprache, Band 31 [1985], pp. 1-16) suggests as a source an Indo-European adjective *pumró-, derived from a noun *pum- "pubic hair," which he alleges is also seen in Sanskrit púmān "man, male being"; by replacement with full grade ablaut, *pumro- would yield *peu̯mro-, whence, by Latin phonetic developments, *peu̯bro- > pūber-. The -b- would then have been introduced into a putative *(im)pūmēs. Unfortunately, the Sanskrit and Indo-European points in Adams' proposal have been effectively demolished by Karin Stüber (see Die primären s-Stämme des Indogermanischen, Wiesbaden, 2002, p. 43).
1565, in the meaning defined above
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Cite this Entry
“Pubes.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pubes. Accessed 21 Nov. 2024.
Medical Definition
pubes
1 of 2 nouncalled also pubic hair
pubes
2 of 2plural of pubis
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